Team Teach – Phase 1

In the Spring term, we started a new project of ‘Team Teach’. We had discussed it in SLT and decided to try out a series of lessons where all teachers worked in pairs.

Main aim:

To address previous Ofsted comments about Outstanding teaching in a creative way;

To give teachers time to plan, teach and review a lesson in either Maths or English;

To enable Senior teachers to work with different teachers across the school;

To enable teachers to both contribute to the teaching rather than one simply observing;

To raise the awareness of the criteria set by Ofsted for outstanding teaching;

To allow new ideas to flourish and share them;

To tackle some of the more difficult areas to teach effectively such as grammar and fractions/decimals.

Here are some examples of areas tackled in these lessons:

Nursery – To explore colour and how it can be changed

Nursery – To listen to others in small groups – to maintain attention

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Reception –To revisit phase 3 letters and sounds and to identify the letter sounds children have learnt – to use diagraphs and read and spell.

Reception –To work with money and understand what coins are needed to buy things from a shop, focusing on addition.

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Year 1/2 – To use drama to generate ideas – to use interesting sentences to create imagery.

Year 1/2 – To understand a block graph – to choose appropriate data in order to create a block graph.

Year 1/2 – To write about the experiences of Christopher Columbus in a message with a bottle- To answer questions about Christopher Columbus.

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Year 3/4 – To convert fractions into decimals and percentages.

Year 3/4 – To solve problems independently and investigate pentagons and how many acute angles and right angles are possible.

Year 3/4 – To use the subordinate clause in writing, to use grammatical terms correctly.

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Year 5 – To look at multiplying fractions working with fractions below and above one whole converting improper fractions into mixed numbers.

Year 5 – To convert fractions into decimals and understanding the concept of tenths and hundredths.

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Year 6 – To revise Roman Numerals and then decipher famous dates of battles using the knowledge gained in the lesson.

Impact of ‘Team Teach’

Here is some feedback from the first experience of ‘Team Teach’:

Teachers enjoyed having some extra time to plan and review.

Teachers enjoyed planning, teaching and reviewing with another teacher.

Teachers feel more knowledgeable about what the criteria from Ofsted are for ‘outstanding’.

Some good ideas were shared such as how you ‘prove’ progression in a lesson. This was done with 4 questions at start and end of lesson to show how far the children had moved from start point. (evidence of progress)

Children enjoyed the experience of having two teachers and a lesson which would naturally have had more thought and input than is normally possible.

Teachers enjoyed sharing the lesson rather than one teacher simply being observed by another – both were involved.